Israelis should assume by now that whether they act tentatively or strongly, the negative reaction will be the same. Therefore why not project the image of a strong, unapologetic country to a world that has completely lost its moral bearings, and is more likely to respect Israel’s strength than its past concern for meeting an impossible global standard?

How odd that the more the activists, political leaders, and media figures issue moral strictures against Israel, the more they prove abjectly amoral. And the more they seek to pressure Israel, the more they are liberating it to do what it feels it must.

The path toward terrorism begins with the erasure of moral lines. It starts with the equation of terrorists — who seek to kill civilians — with the armed forces who seek to stop the terrorists. It mistakes cartoons with corpses, collateral damage with intentional murder. It fails to distinguish between an errant missile and an intentional suicide bomb. It confuses the “extremists” with those who fight extremism.

As we Americans fight the war on terror, we must fight with our heads as well as our hearts. Americans must always demand the highest standards from their army and from those of allies such as Israel. But we should never validate the type of thinking that is the hallmark of the very enemies we pursue. Today Israel’s soldiers are in the dock. But tomorrow it will be our own.

Obama reminds me of my own twenties when I was both ignorant and arrogant in my self-absorption: Wondering why a particular ag supply company would not put all the bags on the pallet that I paid for, confused over why the guy I hired to level a field left his CAT meter on his idling carry-all while he visited his girlfriend and billed me for the “hours,” disheartened that workers would habitually write “320 tablas” on their first grape tray, when in fact I counted only 231 when I walked down their rows, and curious why a big ag corporation would spray “fix” on their table grapes that made them bigger and prettier than mine, even though the chemical was long banned. Unfortunately, appeals to reason were, to quote Mark Knopfler, “all for nothing.”

He thinks the president will eventually learn. I think that Victor and David are both thinking like an ignorant youths. The erasure of the moral lines isn’t a bug of the left’s thinking; it’s a feature.

And it looks like the events of the day suggest that “learning” will not be for a while yet:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that senior Obama administration officials have been telling foreign governments that the administration intends to support an effort next week at the United Nations to set up an independent commission, under UN auspices, to investigate Israel’s behavior in the Gaza flotilla incident. The White House has apparently shrugged off concerns from elsewhere in the U.S. government that a) this is an extraordinary singling out of Israel, since all kinds of much worse incidents happen around the world without spurring UN investigations; b) that the investigation will be one-sided, focusing entirely on Israeli behavior and not on Turkey or on Hamas; and c) that this sets a terrible precedent for outside investigations of incidents involving U.S. troops or intelligence operatives as we conduct our own war on terror.

Again a-c are features. After all administration actions have political costs, international actions can produce the condemnations they wish without the political risk and can be reluctantly be accepted.

Update: The Whitehouse is denying it. That could mean that they were not planning on doing this or that they were until it came out early and they want to avoid any political damage ahead of time, a lot easier to deal with a fait acompli that to deal with it ahead of time.